The present invention relates to a pickup unit and a pickup assembly for musical instruments and more particularly relates to improvements in the construction of a pickup unit and a pickup assembly for musical instruments having strings such as electric pianos and electric guitars in which string vibrations may be converted into electrical pulsations and in turn into sound.
A pickup unit for musical instruments is known, for example, from the U.S. Pat. No. 3,685,384.
In the construction of the conventional pickup unit, electrodes accompanying a piezo-electric element are in general connected to associated electric circuit by electric lead wires lapped or soldered on the electrode terminals of the pickup unit. Use of such electric lead wires in the limited space left above a frame for holding strings in the musical instrument and under a number of strings is inevitably accompanied by drawback such as troublesome work in setting the leads, unexpected contact of the lead wires with the strings, difficult bundling of a number of lead wires and ill influence by noises. In addition, as the piezo-electric element is exposed to the outside atmosphere, the element is apt to experience damage by atmospheric moisture, thereby seriously degrading the operational characteristics of the pickup unit.
In building up the pickup assembly from a plurality of pickup units in the conventional art, the pickup units have to be fixed on the string holding frame of the musical instrument, e.g. on the piano plate, respectively. This requires highly skilled complicated hand work as the pickup units must be precisely registered at prescribed positions with respect to the strings and to the electric circuits and further must be preciseby spaced apart from each other at uniform intervals. Otherwise uneven pressures imposed on different pickup units tend to cause inter-units deviation in the electric outputs thereof.